Lorraine Kelly Opens Up on Job Insecurity Fears

says she 'worried about existing' after losing her high-profile job at GMTVwhile she was on maternity leave. 

Kelly was among a rotating team of presenters on the daily breakfast show before welcoming daughter Rosie, her only child with husband , in June 1992. 

But the presenter, 66, was blindsided after bosses told her she was being replaced, little more than a week before her scheduled return. 

Reflecting on her departure with during an appearance on his Man Made podcast, Kelly said her status as a freelancer left her in a precarious financial state during those early months of motherhood.  

She said: 'The kind of job I do, I'm a freelancer, I'm a taxi for hire and I don't take anything for granted, I certainly don't. 

'After I had my daughter, that was a really dark time; just after having a baby you're all over the place, and I got sacked, or didn't get my contract renewed - virtually the same thing - and that was a very dark time, that was a really, really dark time because everything's just taken away from you, and you're like, "What the hell am I gonna do?" 

Much like Kelly, the presenter's cameraman husband also worked as a freelancer, and their combined lack of job security left the couple struggle to pay their mortgage. 

'I basically lived from contract to contract, I really did,' she recalled. 'You might get a year's contract, or you might get two years if you're lucky.

'It would have actually been really nice is someone had told me in 40 years you're gonna still be doing it, because every time that contract was up you get the washing machine stomach, you get the dread, you get the fear, you get all the worry, you know. 

'Especially after I'd had my daughter and you're worrying about just existing; that was always a worry, so I had that. You could never quite relax or take things for granted, which I never do.' 

Kelly now faces an equally uncertain future as ITV , with her daily breakfast show's year-round one hour slot now slashed to just thirty minutes a day. 

But the presenter says the birth of her granddaughter Billie has changed her outlook, and made her appreciate the present. 

'Even now, I don't know what's going to happen, no-one does,' she said. 'but certainly since I became a granny I have been able to live in the now, because [Billie} does. 

'She's not even two yet, but I will take fifteen minutes to look at a puddle, and it's fantastic, and I will blow bubbles for hours, and the first bubble is as exciting for her, and for me, as the one hundredth bubble.' 

Kelly previously emphasised the need for better representation of working-class voices in the media because “if you’re only going to hear elite opinions we’re never going to get anywhere”.

The daytime host appeared on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs last November, where she also her eponymous show reduced to 30-minute episodes that will be shown for just 30 weeks a year from 2026.

Kelly, who has appeared on national TV since the mid-1980s, told the programme: 'Things have to change. I have been through so many regime changes in my life. For me this is just another one, but it’s seismic.' 

The presenter says the birth of her granddaughter Billie has changed her outlook, and made her appreciate the present (pictured with Billie and daughter Rosie in 2026)